Advice on almost anything…

I have been in a relationship with a girl for 1 year now. My brother set us up and she’s a long-time friend of his. She came to visit for a weekend (she’s was from another province). We hit it off and she moved in with me right away.

Everything’s been good but after a year of living together I know she wants to get engaged, married, the whole thing. BUT… while we get along well, I don’t think I want to be with her for the rest of my life. Something is missing and I can’t put my finger on it otherwise we’d be working on it.

So, how do I get out of this? She has befriended all my friends and my brother would be mad as hell.

Thanks,

No Easy Exit

Dear Exit,

Your sign off – No Easy Exit – made me think of a quote – “nothing easy is worth having…” and I think this kind of applies to your situation.

The easiest thing would be to stay, right? She’d be happy, your brother would be happy, your friends would be happy… except… you wouldn’t be. And that’s a fairly important part of the equation to ensure the whole thing would work out in the end, non? Staying in a relationship to satisfy everyone else is a sure fire way for everyone to end up miserable.

I’ve said before that I’m really glad the whole stigma of “shacking up” – living together before marriage – has gone by the wayside. It’s such an important part of either taking things to the next lever, or determining it isn’t the right relationship for you, and the latter is definitely where you’re at.

The most important person for you to deal with here is your girlfriend – your brother and friends are secondary, as their lives aren’t really going to be all that impacted by the impending changes.

And sadly, honesty is the only path here. And kindness too. There’s a pretty good chance this is going to blind shot she doesn’t see coming, considering you acknowledge that things have been fairly good, so you’ll need to be as compassionate as possible.

Tell her how you’ve been feeling and emphasize that keeping her in a relationship that has no future would be the most unfair thing of all. Be prepared she’ll hear that as empty platitudes now, but hopefully down the road she’ll be grateful you didn’t waste more of her time. That’s a theory that can only be proven right with time though.

Since you are living together, the transition is likely going to be rough, so it would be best if you had some kind of plan in place so that you both don’t have to stay in limbo longer than necessary. Would you be moving out? Would you be taking all the furniture, would you be leaving her in a lurch financially? Try to have all those things figured out to the best of your ability before you talk to her.

Again, staying would be easy, but in reference to the quote we started with, would it be worth having?